Capcom began this generation with two major franchises: Dead Rising and Lost Planet. While Dead Rising has met with critical and financial success, Lost Planet has had a harder time attracting an audience. Perhaps, it’s because the franchise always changes… Continue Reading →

Capcom began this generation with two major franchises: Dead Rising and Lost Planet. While Dead Rising has met with critical and financial success, Lost Planet has had a harder time attracting an audience. Perhaps, it’s because the franchise always changes its approach too drastically from entry to entry.

The first game was outstanding introducing players to a gorgeous ice world, where they could fight monsters in sleek Vital Suits. And despite what popular opinion says, I liked Lost Planet 2 and thought the co-op was an asset, turning the franchise into a Monster Hunter-type game with guns.

But once again, Lost Planet 3 mixes it up again. Done by Sherman Oaks-based Spark Unlimited, this iteration is a prequel. Players take on the role of Jim Peyton, who travels to E.D.N. III from Earth looking for new opportunities on the Hoth-like planet. But immediately, those plans go to pot as his transport crash lands and he has to be rescued by his employers.

The first weapon you pick up is this pistol.

HE LOOKS LIKE NIC CAGE: That’s where the single-player campaign starts and I had a chance to go through the first 50 minutes of it. Immediately, I noticed two things: 1) the camera for this third-person shooter feels different from its predecessors and 2) Peyton looks a lot like a bearded Nicolas Cage. The resemblance is uncanny.

After the disastrous landing, the first few missions deal with Peyton having to find a transponder for a rescue. It also teaches players the basics. One thing missing is that Thermal Energy doesn’t seem to play a major role in keeping players alive. It has turned into a resource that’s used to get players money. It works with the bigger narrative of a protagonist working for a company mining the power source so they can sell it on an Earth that needs. But I do miss that constant sense of peril when players weren’t in the Vital Suit. In previous games, Thermal Energy was important in keeping players alive in the “extreme conditions.”

Players will have to fend off familiar looking akrid foes.

HEADING TO HQ: As Peyton makes his way to headquarters, he encounters Sepia akrids that fans have learned to hate. Players also see one of the newer species, a tiger looking creature that almost devours the newcomer. Fortunately, he’s saved by a mech pilot named Kenny LaRoche and taken to the base.

That’s where the first surprise about Lost Planet 3 comes to light. Although this is a futuristic setting on a distant planet, this game has more in common with Westerns. The way it’s set up, the campaign is about being on the uncharted frontier, where weather is a danger and the wildlife can kill you at any moment. Peyton is basically a sci-fi forty-niner, a person who is gathering up Thermal Energy instead of panning and mining for gold.

Lured by the opportunity to make more money for his family, Peyton finds himself doing odd jobs in his enormous rig. Yes rig. It seems as though Vital Suits have taken a back seat in this prequel and they give way to lumbering suit fortresses that double as drills. They’re essential to survival giving players a HUD that offers up a map and radar. When players are away from the rig, they lose those advantages and fending off akrids and other foes gets harder.

In the rig, the game goes into a first-person mode. In this situation, you’ll have to use the rig to batten down the hatches of the base.

SIEGE SCENARIOS: Furthermore, the rig acts as an armory letting players fill up on ammo and switch weapons. They’ll need it because when the rig starts drilling for that Thermal Energy the akrids come out of the woodwork and Peyton will have to defend and repair his vehicle long enough for the machine to do its work.

The emphasis on a headquarters also means that structure of Lost Planet 3 will be different from the past. It seems as though it will be mission-based. There will be less linearity and more opportunity for character development as Peyton explores the base, gets to know people such as the overzealous mechanic Gale or the quartermaster Birdie.

As you help LaRoche, you’ll end up far from your rig and will have to deal with akrids blindly. It’s here where the game’s flaws are exposed.

YOUR FIRST MISSION: The first full mission that I played through focused on finding out what happened to LaRoche, the Frenchman who saved Peyton in the beginning. Like any other quest, players get credits for completing the task and they can use that money to buy new weapons or upgrades.

As I searched for LaRoche, whose rig fell over and landed near Watkin’s Pass, I discovered that the controls aren’t as snappy as I’d like them to be. Maneuvering the rig was fine and even a little fun. It was great punching through ice with the claw and jabbing at enemies with the drill. Later on, Peyton even uses the rig to batten down the hatches of the base before the bad weather tears the roof off.

But it’s when the protagonist gets out of the rig that control issues stand out. Reloading isn’t as responsive as I want. And again, I can’t stress enough how weird the camera is. It could potentially be a problematic. But perhaps all those flaws can be fixed with some fine tuning from Spark Unlimited.

The team has some time between now and Aug. 27 when Lost Planet 3 is released on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.